A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America eBook

[16] “The white hunter, on encamping in his
journeys, cuts down green trees, and builds a large
fire of long logs, sitting at some distance from it.
The Indian hunts up a few dry limbs, cracks them into
little pieces a foot in length, builds a small fire,
and sits close to it. He gets as much warmth
as the white hunter without half the labour, and does
not burn more than a fiftieth part of the wood.
The Indian considers the forest his own, and is careful
in using and preserving every thing which it affords.
He never kills more than he has occasion for.
The white hunter destroys all before him, and cannot
resist the opportunity of killing game, although he
neither wants the meat nor can carry the skins.
I was particularly struck with this wanton practice,
which lately occurred on White river. A hunter
returning from the woods, heavily laden with the flesh
and skins of five bears, unexpectedly arrived in the
midst of a drove of buffalos, and wantonly shot down
three, having no other object than the sport of killing
them. This is one of the causes of the enmity
existing between the white and red hunters of Missouri".—­Schoolcroft’s
Tour in Missouri, page 52.

[17] Does the General include among the arts of civilization,
that of systematically robbing the Indians of their
farms and hunting grounds? If so, no doubt these
arts of civilization, must inevitably “destroy
the resources of the savage,” and “doom
him to weakness and decay.”

[18] The Indians apply the term “Christian honesty,”
precisely in the same sense that the Romans applied
“Punica fides.”

[19] There is an old Indian at present in the Missouri
territory, to whom his tribe has given the cognomen
of “much-water,” from the circumstance
of his having been baptized so frequently.

[20] Heriot says (page 320), “They have evinced
a decided attachment to their ancient habits, and
have gained less from the means that might
have smoothed the asperities of their condition, than
they have lost by copying the vices of those,
who exhibited to their view the arts of civilization.”

[21] This letter was dictated by Red-jacket, and interpreted
by Henry Obeal, in the presence of ten chiefs, whose
names are affixed, at Canandaigua, January 18, 1821.

[22] “The attachment which savages entertain
for their mode of life supersedes every allurement,
however powerful, to change it. Many Frenchmen
have lived with them, and have imbibed such an invincible
partiality for that independent and erratic condition,
that no means could prevail on them to abandon it.
On the contrary, no single instance has yet occurred
of a savage being able to reconcile himself to a state
of civilization. Infants have been taken from
among the natives, and educated with much care in
France, where they could not possibly have intercourse
with their countrymen and relations. Although
they had remained several years in that country, and
could not form the smallest idea of the wilds of America,
the force of blood predominated over that of education:
no sooner did they find themselves at liberty than
they tore their clothes in pieces, and went to traverse
the forests in search of their countrymen, whose mode
of life appeared to them far more agreeable than that
which they had led among the French.”—­_-Heriot_,
p. 354.